Severe Weather Appears to be Driving Move to Microgrids

Whether you accept the phenomenon of global warming as the cause of more severe storms across the U.S. or not, the fact that more powerful weather incidents are occurring with increasing frequency can’t be disputed. Many of those storms cause major power outages, and that appears to be driving a new consumer move towards building microgrid electrical power generators.
A DC Microgrid is an electrical system that creates, distributes, stores and consumes direct current electricity to power a wide variety of equipment. A microgrid can be isolated and self-sustaining, which means it would not be affected when the AC grid experiences a power outage.

According to the web site FierceEnergy.com, the State of Connecticut has authorized construction of up to 27 microgrid sites as of early 2013, in response to Tropical Storm Irene in August 2011, and a rare blizzard that hit the east coast in October 2011, both of which led to massive power outages.